Tepa of the Valley of Wind
by ice73
Summary: Years after the end of the war between the Doroks and Torumekians, a teenager finds herself having to fill the shoes of her predecessor.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer**: _Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind_ © Hayao Miyazaki/Animage/Studio Ghibli. This work is not intended for commercial gain nor to infringe on any of these copyrights.

* * *

**The End of the Beginning**

Nausicaä jumped down the last few feet from the Flying Jar's ladder, her boots landing with a solid _thump_ on the cold, dusty earth. There was carnage everywhere—dead insects, burning machines, the still-twitching remains of heedra, and men staring sightlessly up at the winter sky . . . .

But she paid the terrible vista no heed. Her attention was focused on the still form in red clothes, sprawled face-down in the gully about twenty feet away from her.

She reached the figure and carefully turned it on its side. It was wearing a solid metal breastplate with a big gash in front, and she quickly unfastened it, preparing herself for what she might find underneath. As she worked the straps, she remembered another girl, victim of another war, ages ago.

"Mama?" said a soft voice. The prone figure's eyes fluttered open. "Teacher . . . ."

"Lie still." Nausicaä tossed the clamshell halves of the armor away and set about making her former pupil as comfortable as possible.

There was the sound of crunching gravel. The wind-rider turned in the direction of the noise. "May I borrow your cloak?"

Without a word Kushana, Empress of Torumekia, who had come to stand beside her friend, unfastened her garment and handed it over. Nausicaä laid it on the ground.

"This may hurt a bit, so brace yourself. One, two . . . three!"

The young woman groaned as she was rolled onto the cloak, and for the first time the weak sunlight shone on the bloody furrow in the middle of her torso.

"How bad?" Nausicaä could barely make out her words.

"Not too bad," she said steadily. "You'll have another scar to add to your collection. Boys will be all the more intimidated by you, dear heart." She paused to glance at Kushana, who then scrambled and disappeared over the lip of the gully.

"Really?" The young woman laughed feebly. A bright rivulet of blood ran down her cheek. "Just my luck . . . ."

Nausicaä reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. "Just hang in there. Help'll be here soon. I'm with you."

The girl nodded.

Nausicaä wiped the blood off the waxen face with the back of a glove. "Hoclero?"

"I-I don't know." Glancing past her teacher at the sky, she added, sounding infinitely weary, "I'm so sad."

"You did what you had to do."

"I know, but . . . even after all that's happened, I don't really hate him. If I could've found another way . . . . Curse this war."

The young woman's expression changed; it appeared as though she were listening to something. Her gaze caught Nausicaä's. "Highness, please tell my mother to be happy. I will be . . . traveling on . . . ."

The Child of the Wind closed her eyes. Her cold hand released her teacher's and fell to the still, wet earth.

Some minutes passed before three people came upon the tableau of the Blue-Clad One bent over the figure in red, a tiny splash of color over another, unmoving amid the gray flotsam of the world scattered around them.

Nausicaä looked up at them. "Please." The calm was in her voice; the despair was in her eyes. "Master of the Garden, can you save her?"


	2. Tepa of the Valley of Wind

**Tepa of the Valley of Wind**

She was flying in the dark again, maintaining station with the larger craft to starboard. It was scary flying through the absolute blackness, but this was an important occasion and nothing could've stopped her from accompanying her teacher into the night; one last goodbye, one last farewell to someone who meant so much to her.

She felt a gentle tug at the edge of her consciousness, and she glanced at the cockpit of the Pejite-made machine. The person inside gestured, her face and movements dimly lit by the glow of the instruments on her dashboard.

_You'll have to turn back now,_ came the voice in her mind._ Thanks for seeing me off. Goodbye._

The person aboard the kite carefully inched her machine closer and closer to the other, fighting the turbulence coming off the wings of larger flyer, till she judged the moment and distance right. Then, with supreme effort, she tilted the glider so it described a slow roll around the other plane's fuselage. As she did so, she reached out with her hand, and for a few moments her palm touched the Ohmu-eye canopy above the other pilot.

The person inside also reached out with her hand. Their eyes met, and between them passed one last look of love, understanding, and encouragement. The continuing maneuver pulled her hand from the canopy and slipstream tore the kite away. As its pilot slowed down and righted herself, she watched her companion dwindle quickly into a glowing blue dot, to be swallowed by the darkness. Underneath her flying cap she blinked away the tears that were forming at the corners of her eyes. Standing straighter in her cradle, she shifted her weight back, banked the glider around, and headed for the faraway lights of home.

------oOo------

"Wake up, sleepyhead!"

The blast was enough to wake the dead, and it did. The young woman in the narrow cot promptly rolled away from the horrendous noise and ended up falling to the floor, her lower back resting against the side of the cot frame, her bare legs sticking up in the air like knobby tree branches as the hem of her shift fell midway between her knees and her waist.

"What? What?" came her confused voice, still heavy with sleep.

A chorus of laughter erupted in the room, and the woman's embarrassment quickly burned away the fog surrounding her brain. She straightened herself out and got to her feet.

"Very funny," she yelled. "And just what are you kids doing here?"

"Gram Desina told us to wake you," said one precocious little intruder, a girl of six years' age. She was properly dressed in the usual outfit of long jacket, boots and pants, but her hood was missing. "She wants you to come down."

"Alright, give me a few minutes to get dressed. Run along and tell her I'll be there shortly." She looked at the five children who had entered her room. "You ruined the dream I was having."

"I'll bet it was about that guy you always hang around with," teased the oldest one, a boy of twelve. "What's his name again?"

"Oh, the mean one?" said another, a girl so covered by her clothing the only thing you could see of her body was her face. "I think his name was . . . Hoclero, that's it, Hoclero." And so the children started teasing their victim, calling out various things like "She likes Hoclero!" and "Is he a good kisser?" to "Blech! That's disgusting!" The boy turned around and wrapped his arms around himself, moving them up and down and making smooching noises.

"Out! Out, all of you!"

Laughing and tittering, the band ran out the door and down the hall which led to the staircase. The set-upon young woman harrumphed.

"And stop running in the corridors! Kansei, you're responsible!"

"Yes, ma'am," a girl's voice floated up from the stairs.

Her nerves somewhat frazzled, red-headed Tepa of the Valley of Wind closed the door and pulled her simple gray shift over her head. _Crazy kids,_ she thought. _Someone should teach them to respect other people's privacy._ But she didn't really mean it; with the castle as crowded as it was, run-ins were common, expected, and allowed for.

The Valley people had been kind enough to take many refugees into their land. Orphans were usually sent to the castle and assigned to the care of the staff, now much expanded. The limiting factor was food: there wasn't much left over to feed extra mouths in the first place. The elders had never had to turn a group of refugees away yet, but there was always a first time, and Tepa dreaded its coming . . .

"We take them all in," she remembered her mentor saying long ago, as she grabbed her clothes from the cabinet. "We'll find room for them, somehow. And we tighten our belts and work more diligently at our food gathering."

Several minutes later, fully dressed in her crimson wind-rider gear, Tepa emerged from her room and hurried downstairs. She found Elder Desina waiting for her down in a common hall, where people were busy mingling about, on this or that errand.

The elder was a woman with a shock of pure white hair and small, close-set dark eyes that shone with intelligence. She was dressed in her usual long blue robe with embroidered sleeves, and the cap upon her head was decorated with a single red jewel affixed to the brow. These were the only indications of her rank.

Her bulbous nose quivered in the air like a questing beak as she looked up at Tepa. "Ah, my dear," she said. Her voice was low and strong. "Good morning."

"It would've been, except for the siren," Tepa returned.

"Eh?"

"Sorry, nothing. You called for me, elder?"

"Yes. Since this is a special day for all of us, I want you to help keep an eye on all the people coming to the fair. Report to Bogarin and assist him however you can."

"Yes, elder." Tepa bowed.

Bogarin, who was in charge of the guards, was in his small office in one of the lower armories. Through the open door, Tepa had the impression that someone had tried to stuff an Ohmu into a cage designed for a fox-squirrel. The burly man was doing something with a piece of parchment that vaguely reminded her of a skirmish in miniature scale. She politely cleared her throat.

The combat halted. Dark eyes with a large nose and bristling black eyebrows and moustache turned their full attention on her.

"Yes?" His tone was abrupt, but Tepa ignored it. She was used to his way of speaking.

"Gram Desina told me to come to you, sir," she told him. "She said I was to help with the fair –"

"Just the one for the job!" Bogarin suddenly roared, banging a meaty hand on the desk. "Old Desina must have read my mind, tiny as it is. I have something for you. Sit down." He gestured to the single seat in front of his desk.

In short order Tepa learned that the instructions that had been sent to the Dorok ships coming to the Valley of Wind for the fair—the first event of its kind since anyone could remember—were incomplete: they were not told to land miles outside the Valley border, and could possibly come straight in and expose the small, fragile land to who-knows-what from the outside. Bogarin said it would be much better for everyone to send Tepa out to inform and guide them. He stood up (the top of his bald head almost hit the ceiling)—and pointed to a map of the Valley pinned to the wall behind him.

"We assume they'll come in from this direction," he said, pointing to the southeast. "We've already got spotters up, and we were planning to use that ship that your Uncle Asbel helped build—but I think it's a lot better if it were you going."

"Okay," said Tepa, scrutinizing the map. "It'll be good to stretch my wings. Where do you want me to land them?"

They discussed the particulars for some time. Then Tepa had her breakfast, made her way to the castle hangar and took off on her kite. She had plenty of time to kill, thanks to her rude awakening by the children. It was just as well; she was going to look for a certain mean someone and for his help.

--------oOo--------

The _meulu_ grazed peacefully on the pale green grass in the pasture as the man sat contemplatively against a midriff-high rock. To outside appearances he appeared to be as one in his twenties. He had dark brown hair, eyes whose irises changed color depending on the light, various shades of blue to gray, a rounded jaw, and a slim nose. He was dressed in the simple dun garb of a herder. A straw hat with a broad brim—downturned in front and upturned at the rear—sat on his head, and a wooden staff lay cradled in the crook of his arms; his long boots lay beside him, discarded for the moment, and his bare toes twiddled the turf as he watched the silent approach of the ivory-colored wing.

It crabbed smoothly in the quartering crosswind, and passed a safe distance away from the flock before adjusting course to approach him more directly, coming in on his right, upslope from him and downwind from the animals.

He grunted. At least this time she wasn't going to scatter the _meulu_, like she had done before, after a heated argument. It had taken him an hour to gather them afterward.

The glider landed silently about fifteen feet away from him, its skids making a _shhhh_ noise as they touched the ground. When it had stopped, the slight figure in red dismounted, waving to him as it removed its gloves.

"An excellent landing," he called.

"Thanks. You're farther away than usual."

"There still isn't enough grass on the lower slopes." He moved his boots out of the way, and the pilot sat down beside him and removed her flying cap.

She leaned back against the rock and inhaled. They sat in companionable silence for some minutes.

"The sky is so blue," she commented.

The man made a low chuckle. "You came a long way to tell me that. I have my own eyes."

"And you're still as blind as an earthworm."

"You sing worse than a loon with a sore throat."

"The children called you 'the mean one.'"

"They're forever doing that. The bigger children are the reason I'm up here, remember, Tepa?"

"I'm sorry," she said contritely. She knew he meant the adults down in the valley who had misgivings about him. Tepa didn't know exactly how the distrust had begun, or what it was about. Maybe it was because he was an outsider—he and his father had been found just outside the valley, weak from exposure and speaking a language no one could understand. Maybe they were jealous of how Her Highness had taken him in after his father had died. Sure, he was a little different. His blood wasn't red, for one thing—it was a deep, deep blue-green. His thewed frame wasn't big or burly, but it held amazing amounts of power and endurance. There wasn't anyone else she could think of whom she wanted to watch her back, as he had so before. He had proven time and time again his loyalty to Her Highness, to the Valley, and to Tepa. But the suspicions still persisted.

"You just have to ignore them, Hoclero," Tepa said. "I don't believe one single word, and neither does anyone else I know." She twisted and chuffed his hat, upsetting it. "You worry too much about that."

He reseated his headwear and grabbed a glove of hers, whacking her side with it. "Yeah, I know you're right."

Tepa snatched it back and hit him with it. Hoclero took the hat off his head and countered by batting its crown against Tepa's face.

"You're asking for it," he said, getting quickly to his feet.

"Bring it on, shepherd boy," she taunted, standing up and facing him.

With much gusto they began to hit each other with their chosen weapons. The outburst of activity made a few of the sheep-like animals in the flock raise their heads and watch, their mouths moving side to side as they chewed.

"Stone-bottom!" Hoclero exclaimed.

"Mushroom nose!"

"Hey, no fair! You'll never let me live that one down, will you?"

"You started it!"

"Alright, then. Stinkweed-breath!"

"Bird brain!"

"Thick lips!"

"Where'd you get that one from?" asked Tepa, who couldn't be called 'thick-lipped' by any stretch of the imagination. "You diss like a sissy!"

A succession of slaps hit Hoclero in the face, but he just smiled.

"And you hit like a girl!"

"I _am_ a girl, dummy!"

"No you're not. Hair put up already, and none of the boys will even approach you!"

"Th-that's not true!"

"Yes it is! You're more manly than they are!"

"Why you . . . " The outraged Tepa redoubled her glove-attack, forcing Hoclero backward. He had retreated a few yards when he, busy with defending himself and not watching where he was placing his feet, stepped on a stone, which slipped out from under him. The soft grass prevented him from cracking his head when he fell, and he found himself looking up at Tepa's looming form blocking the sun.

"Take that back!" she said threateningly.

"I yield!" Hoclero laughed, raising his hands to shield his face. "Thou art as great a fighter as Regent Kushana!"

Tepa assumed a stern expression and planted a shoe on his chest. "Do you really mean that?" She tried to imitate the Torumekian ruler's characteristic lop-sided sneer, the one no one wanted directed at them because it portended bad things to come, usually involving sharp, pointy metal, projectiles and massive physical trauma.

"Yes, of course."

She stepped off him. "You may rise, barbarian."

"Thank you." Hoclero accepted the proffered hand and got to his feet. "And I'll be Baron Kurotowa." He contorted his features, stretching his mouth and looking at Tepa though widened eyes. Then he mimed falling on face.

Tepa guffawed and collapsed against the rock. Kushana's unfortunate second-in-command had snagged the edge of his cape with his boot during that long-ago visit while exiting that Royal Corvette. Fortunately few were on hand to witness that faux pas, otherwise the embarrassed man might have caused a diplomatic incident.

Hoclero, also laughing, joined her. They lay against the rock, looking up at the heavens.

"Remember what I told you before," Tepa said when they had caught their breaths, "about how I sometimes felt like I was going to fall up into the sky?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I'm feeling it again." Tepa paused. "No end to the falling . . . ."

"Tepa?"

"Hmm?"

"Can you see it now? The wind, I mean."

"Yes, I can."

There was silence for a minute. The ever-present breeze picked up, hissing through the grass. "I didn't mean that about the boys."

"That's okay. I'm too busy to think about stuff like that. None of them are my type anyway."

"You sure?"

"Positive." The wind died down.

"You think she'll be back today?"

"I hope so. Everyone's hoping she'll come back sometime this week. I know it's just a rumor, but—I haven't seen her in such a long time. I hope she's alright."

"Her Highness can take care of herself."

"I know. It's just strange that we've not received news of her for the past three years."

"She's probably just with the Forest People," Hoclero reassured her. "She did tell us she wanted to see that man again."

"What if she decides to stay permanently with him, as she almost did with King Kulubaluka?" Tepa didn't sound pleased with the prospect.

"Then you'll take her place," Hoclero drawled. The answer earned him a glove over his face. "You already have, you know."

"No, I haven't. No one can ever really replace her. I may be a Child of the Wind, but I'm not my teacher."

"Give yourself more credit. You've been doing fine so far." Hoclero idly tossed the glove back to his red-haired companion.

"That wouldn't have been possible without your help, partner," the redhead quietly admitted.

"It's the least I can do I can do for the people who saved me," Hoclero solemnly declared. His hand came up and patted her shoulder. "It'd be a treat if she showed up just when the fair was starting."

"That reminds me," Tepa said, getting off the rock and turning to look at him. "How'd you like to go flying today?"

--------oOo--------

To those at the helm of the converted Dorok merchantman, the kite looked like a bird gleaming in the afternoon sun, as white as the tops of the clouds surrounding them. A string of pennants trailed below it as it slowly passed in front of their ship. The colorful flags signaled peaceful intentions, and a desire to parley.

A young man standing tall in the middle of the bridge gave the order to his signalman to allow the little craft to land. Within minutes a young woman was standing in front of him. Her outfit stood out against the dark robes he and his kin wore. Outside, a large, tailless craft similar to the kite in color sidled into place on the ship's left.

The woman held her hand out, palm forward in a gesture of peace. "Greetings. My name is Tepa," she said in halting Dorok speech. "I was sent to guide you to where you may land."

"I am Dumar Akil, of the tribe of the Saju. I am captain of this ship." His stern countenance gave way to a slight smile. "It would be nice to feel the earth under my feet again. We've come a long way."

The Valley native answered with a smile of her own. "I'll do what I can to oblige you, Captain." She gestured with her hand, and as if on cue the clouds in front of the merchantman parted, revealing the land awaiting them.

"Welcome to the Valley of Wind."


End file.
